doi:10.1093/bjc/azt051
BRIT. J. CRIMINOL. (2013) 53, 997–1016
Advance Access publication 29 August 2013
IS IT A CRIME TO PRODUCE ECOLOGICAL
DISORGANIZATION?
Why Green Criminology and Political Economy Matter in the Analysis of
Global Ecological Harms
Michael J. Lynch, Michael A. Long, Kimberly L. Barrett and
Paul B. Stretesky*
We argue in this paper for a political economic approach to the study of global ecological crimes.
Green criminological studies often employ case study approaches which help explain a particular
green crime; however, these studies lack a coherent theoretical basis. Based on ecological Marxism
and treadmill of production approaches, we outline a theoretical approach for green criminology
that focuses on crimes of ecological disorganization—that is, green harms that are the result of
organizing the productive forces of the economy in a manner that is consistent with capitalism.
We conclude that, to truly understand and remedy green harms, a focus on political economy is
necessary.
Keywords: green criminology, political economy, ecological disorganization, treadmill
of production
Introduction
Historically, orthodox criminology1 has drawn attention to the concept of the environment in limited ways, preferring to pitch the study of environment as a concept
related to control of crimes that occur in public places (e.g. crime prevention through
environmental design, or CEPTED; see Jeffery (1977) as an example of this tradition).
This more traditional approach to the study of the environment in criminology has
also taken the form of hotspot of crime analysis and an emphasis on routine activities
theory (Sherman et al. 1989). One recent alternative to that orthodox view of the environment is ‘green criminology’ that explores green crime and harm from an ecological
vantage point, where harms and crimes committed against ecological units and the
species living in those units are studied (e.g. Del Olmo 1998; South 1998; Beirne 1999;
Stretesky and Lynch 2002, 2011; Walters 2010; White 2011; Long et al. 2012;Westerhuis
et al. 2013). Sometimes, these green crimes and harms are examined as direct forms of
* Michael A. Long, Department of Sociology, Oklahoma State University, 431 Murray, Stillwater, OK 74078, USA; michael.
[email protected]; Michael J. Lynch, Department of Criminology, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL, USA; mjlynch@usf.
edu; Kimberly L. Barrett, Sociology, Anthropology and Criminology Department, Eastern Michigan University, Ypsilanti, MI
48197, USA; [email protected]; Paul B. Stretesky, School of Public Affairs, University of Colorado–Denver, Denver, CO
80217–3364, USA; [email protected].
1
It is commonplace among radical criminologists to refer to mainstream or traditional forms of criminology—that is,
to bureaucratic criminology and its focus on street offenders and their control—as orthodox criminology (see Lynch and
Michalowski 2006). This is similar to the distinction made between orthodox and radical economics.
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© The Author 2013. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies (ISTD).
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victimization, such as when an ecological system is damaged by some harmful action
(White 2011). In other cases, green criminologists explore indirect forms of victimization such as species living in ecological areas where a green crime against the ecology
is committed (e.g. health harms associated with water pollution). Green criminology
also tackles subject matter related to, for example, corporate crimes against the environment that more traditional forms of criminology still tend to overlook (Lynch and
Michalowski 2006). Green criminology has made considerable progress in the discipline, but environmental laws and green issues of justice (e.g. environmental justice)
are still neglected in criminology. Much of this neglect comes from a lack of material
on green criminology as opposed to direct criticism of that material. For example, in
their study of 33 years of criminological research published on the topic of environmental justice, Zilney, McGurrin and Zahran (2006: 56) discovered that only a few
criminologists contribute to the discussion of environmental crime and that ‘the number of criminal justice and criminology scholars publishing in the area of environmental justice remain woefully low’. Lynch et al. (2004: 293) also discovered that six of the
9,410 pages in 16 best-selling criminology textbooks consisted of material that could
be classified as dealing with ‘toxic waste’-related crimes. Lynch et al. (2004) also report
that, during the mid- to late 1990s, there were no articles published on toxic crime in
any of the eight leading criminology journals (Lynch et al. 2004).
When green criminologists engage the criminological literature, they often use a
harm perspective to justify why environmental harm, crime, law and justice ought to
be examined in the discipline (Del Olmo 1998; White 2011). Criminologists also argue
that green harm and crime are more widespread, have more victims and produce more
damage than crimes that ‘occur on the streets’ (Jarrell et al. 2013; Lynch 2013). The
major assumption behind the harm approach is that documenting the harm will establish the validity of green criminology by making the empirical case that these harms
have substantively significant social and economic consequences and therefore deserve
serious study within criminology (Ellefsen et al. 2012; White 2012; Jarrell et al. 2013;
Lynch 2013). Efforts to legitimize green criminology by empirically demonstrating that
green crime creates more harm than street crime are noteworthy. Yet, in taking a more
practical approach that emphasizes harm, green criminology may diminish the importance of the theoretical rationale for considering green harms.2
In the present paper, we explore the theoretical rationale for a more sustained establishment of green crimes and ecological issues in the discipline of criminology. To do
so, we draw on theory and research relevant to ecological disorganization. The ecological disorganization approach draws attention to the ways in which human preferences
for organizing economic production consistent with the objectives of capitalism are an
inherent contradiction with the health of the ecological system. In that view, capitalism must cause ecological disorganization by consuming and polluting nature. As a
result of that inherent contradiction between capitalism and nature, the capitalist system of production must be seen as a crime against nature. The case for that argument
is found below. We begin our theoretical analysis by briefly discussing the common
approach of identifying the extent of the green crime and harm as it is used to open
up space for green criminology in the more traditional literature. Next, we examine
2
We do not diminish the study of street crime. We thank a reviewer for pointing out that similar structural factors are likely
related to both street crime and green crime and that both are worthy of study.
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the contradictions between capitalism and nature and explore ecological Marxism and
treadmill of production approaches. We then explore whether ecological disorganization is a crime against nature produced by capitalist systems of production. In the concluding section, we summarize our argument and illustrate how scholars in different
fields make similar claims.
The Harm Approach in Green Criminology
Green criminology often draws upon the harm perspective that is advanced by Hillyard
and Tombs (2005: 7), who suggest that ‘there is little doubt that the undue attention
given to events which are defined as crimes distracts attention from more serious
harm [and] positively excludes them’. As a result, Hillyard and Tombs (2005, 2007)
argue that a new social harms approach to criminology is needed if the discipline is to
advance scientifically because it lacks ontological reality. In short, the harms approach
within criminology would need to be more objective and encompass a variety of physical harms, including ‘exposures to various environmental pollutants’ (Hillyard and
Tombs 2005: 10). Hillyard and Tombs point out that identifying harms that people
face is clearly difficult, but that it is more objective than relying on a body of law that
already exists and is influenced by power relations in society. While the researchers
see difficulty in identifying the range of harms that exist, they note that this could, in
theory, be accomplished within the discipline. Green criminologists have taken those
calls by Hillyard and Tombs (2005; 2007) seriously and often rely on a harms perspective in the works they produce (Stretesky et al. 2013b). These green criminologists point
to the fact that crime statistics often present a distorted view of crime because they fail
to include the large volume and scope of crime and harm that ecological disorganization produces. In short, green criminologists often reference this harm in comparison
to traditional ‘street’ crimes that the state records for statistical purposes for crimes
such as murder, rape, robbery, assault, larceny and motor vehicle theft (Jarrell et al.
2013). Lynch (2013) has recently noted that green crimes easily surpass the volume and
number of victims reported in crime statistics that are kept by the state. As Hillyard
and Tombs (2005; 2007) have argued, there are a wide variety of green crimes, and
the victims of green crimes include non-traditional victims whom criminologists do
not ordinarily examine (Hall 2013). In addition to human victims, green crimes also
have non-human victims including animals, plants and ecosystems (Ellefsen et al. 2012;
Nurse 2013). Green crimes do not outnumber the crimes reported by the police such
as murder, rape, assault, larceny, burglary and motor vehicle theft simply because there
are more categories of victims (Lynch 2013). For instance, green harms often victimize larger numbers of human victims in a single incident compared with typical street
crimes (Williams 1996b). A single green crime may produce hundreds, thousands or
even millions of human victims (Hillyard and Tombs 2005; White 2012). Some of those
victims suffer repeated victimization as green crimes can also unfold over long periods
of time and have a duration not typically associated with street crimes (Williams 1996a;
1996b). Each of these factors increases the scope, intensity and numbers of green victimizations, making these forms of victimization quite different from the typical street
crime victimization incident (Williams 1996a; Hall 2013; Lynch 2013). Green harm
and crime are important conceptually and theoretically as well because they have the
ability to cause forms of ecological damage that change the very nature of the world
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(White 2012). These green harms can also make the world uninhabitable. Abandoned
towns and communities exist because of the health hazards posed by toxic pollutants and other related environmental disasters that are counted among green crimes
(Lynch 2013). In the United States, for example, these locations include: Times Beach,
Missouri (due to dioxin pollution); Centralia, Pennsylvania (due to underground mining fires); Love Canal, Niagara Falls, NY (due to widespread disposal of toxic waste);
Pitcher, Oklahoma (due to concentrations of lead and zinc pollution); Treece, Kansas
(due to lead pollution). These cities, and others around the world, stand as monuments
to the tremendous harms green crimes can produce. In addition to these abandoned
cities, there are currently 1,163 Superfund sites that are portions of cities, towns and
communities in the United States listed as containing sufficient levels of ground pollution to require remediation (EPA 2013b).
It should also be noted that the financial costs of exposure to environmental pollutants are substantial (Hillyard and Tombs 2005). For children, Landrigan et al. (2002)
estimate the cost of lead poisoning in the United States at US$43.3 billion. For three
other environmental pollutant outcomes (asthma, cancer and developmental disabilities), the cost for children’s health care was estimated to amount to as much as an
additional US$21.4 billion (Landrigan et al. 2002). In this example, we can see that the
one-time annual costs for US children, who comprise about 24 per cent of the population, for only four environmental health outcomes are considerable (McCollister et al.
2010). Thus, if we consider that there are other disease outcomes associated with exposure to environmental toxins and pollutants, and that there are populations excluded
from the above estimates (i.e. adults), the costs of green crimes on human health is
likely to be excessive.
It is instructive to note that several important trends related to green crimes affect
ecological systems locally and globally. In the United States, for example, forest land
has become more fragmented, resulting in an overall loss in forest cover (Griffith et al.
2003). This negatively impacts species maintenance and the health of the ecosystems,
particularly in relation to climate and temperature change (Fall et al. 2010). Similar
results are found for the global ecosystem and its stability (on biodiversity, see Butchart
et al. (2004); on carbon and deforestation, see Cramer et al. (2004); on wetlands, see
Zedler and Kercher (2005); on wetland loss due to rising sea level, see Nicholls et al.
(1999)).
Theoretically, there are important differences between green criminology and traditional forms of criminology. The traditional criminologists draw attention to the individual and their character and relationships as the salient features of crime (Hillyard
and Tombs 2005). In the green literature, however, the focus is drawn to how structural
forces such as capitalism and mechanisms within capitalism such as the treadmill of
production generate ecological crimes by the very nature of the structural composition
of these forces of production (see Long et al. 2012; Stretesky et al. 2013a, b). In the terms
of ecological Marxism, this means that the structures of capitalism and nature are
in inherent contradiction and conflict, with each expansion of capitalism promoting
ecological destruction and the disorganization of nature (see below and Foster 2000;
Burkett 2006).
What the above indicators describe is a dramatic change in both local and global ecosystems produced by green harm. Theoretically, the question is: what ties these ecological changes and harms together in a coherent and useful way? In general terms, these
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problems relate to ideas of change and transition found within the major macro-level
school of criminology: social disorganization theory. Social disorganization theory suggests that major changes in urban areas are the result of large-scale social transitions
such as industrialization and urbanization. Geographers have long traced the trajectories of industrialization and urbanization to the growth of capitalism (Scott 1986;
Bensel 2000). They have treated industrialization and urbanization in a political economic context—an approach that has largely been ignored within the criminological
literature. In cross-cultural criminological research, these effects (industrialization/
urbanization) have been depicted as measures of modernization (e.g. Bennett 1991),
and much cross-cultural research addresses the effects of modernization on crime (e.g.
Austin and Kim 1999). Similar research can also be found with respect to the effects of
industrialization, urbanization and modernization on ecological issues (e.g. EhrhardtMartinez et al. 2002).
Ecological researchers have also provided a broader explanation that ties industrialization, urbanization and modernization together to understand the emergence of
ecological problems. Based on political economy, this explanation posits that capitalism precedes industrialization, urbanization and modernization in contemporary
contexts. That approach for explaining ecological disorganization has been employed
widely in the ecological and economics literatures (Humphreys 2003; Clark et al. 2010;
Jorgenson 2010; Jorgenson et al. 2010; Mbatu 2010; Jorgenson and Clark 2011; York et al.
2011; Burgess et al. 2012; Clark and Jorgenson 2012; Clark et al. 2012; Jorgenson et al.
2012; Long et al. 2012). Within that literature, ecological Marxism and the treadmill of
production theory both use political economic theory to demonstrate that there is an
inherent conflict or contradiction between capitalism and nature. That inherent conflict means that capitalism must destroy nature to advance (Foster 2000; Burkett 2006).
It is to that view that we turn our attention.
The Contradiction between Capitalism and Nature
Two environmental theories which are sometimes joined together—treadmill of production theory (ToP) and ecological Marxism—argue that capitalism and nature are
in contradiction with one another (Schnaiberg 1980; Foster 2000, 2012; Burkett 2006;
Foster and Burkett 2008). To understand the logic of this argument, it is necessary to
outline the basic operational principles of capitalism, and then to extend those principles to a discussion of ecological disorganization.
As a system of production, capitalism is based on unequal ownership of the means of
production (Marx 1974). The owners of the means of production must employ labour
to operate the means of production. That labour is provided by the working class who,
under capitalism, has no alternative but to offer its labour for sale to the owning class.
The owners of the means of production organize production in such a way that labour
is exploited to generate surplus value. Surplus value is the value above production costs
that is retained by the capitalist class. In essence, the volume of surplus value retained by
the capitalist class is a function of the exploitation of labour in the production process.
Capitalism has one widely agreed-upon goal—to increase the volume of profit produced. In Marxian analysis, the amount of profit is partially determined by the rate of
surplus value and partially determined by expanding production—that is, by increasing the volume of goods produced and sold (Marx 1974). Thus, in order for profit to
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expand, the production process and the exploitation of labour must both constantly
increase.
Marx analysed this process in the production phase and assumed that the input for
production—raw materials and capital—were prerequisites for the initiation of production. However, it was not Marx himself who exposed the inherent contradiction between
capitalism and nature, but rather ecological Marxists who, drawing on Marx’s earlier
writings, initiated the discussion of this contradiction (Foster 2000; Burkett 2006). In
doing so, ecological Marxists illustrated that, in order for production to begin and to
expand, inputs into the system must be available and also must expand. In other words,
for capitalism to expand, it must increasingly consume larger quantities of natural
resources. The expansion of capitalism, therefore, leads to the escalation of ecological
destruction through consumption of nature’s raw materials in the production process.
In contrast to the capitalist system of expanding resource consumption, nature’s productive system is based on growth through conservation (Foster 2000; Burkett 2006).
Nature has its own system of production (Foster 2000; Burkett 2006) which produces
goods sustainably and promotes the development of the forms of life now in existence
on Earth (Kovel 2007). The disruption of that system causes various forms of environmental instability. One main example in the modern era is climate change (Lovelock
2000; 2007). Other forms of environmental instability include: the increase in pollution; pollution’s changing forms, locations and scope; the destruction of forests and
wetlands; the loss of plant and animal diversity; and so forth.
The treadmill of production
Schnaiberg (1980) introduced his theory on the ToP which explored the capitalism–nature contradiction from the perspective of the consequences of production.
Schnaiberg’s ToP perspective introduced the concept of ecological disorganization,
and illustrated the ways in which the capitalist treadmill of production produces ecological disorganization.
Schnaiberg chose the phrase ‘treadmill of production’ as a descriptor of capitalism
that was consistent with the argument that capitalism must constantly expand and is
constantly in motion. The capitalist system is constantly moving and producing to facilitate its inherent growth imperatives. Schnaiberg’s argument also suggested that the
capitalist ToP changed significantly following the Second World War. After an initial
period of expansion following the Second World War, human labour inputs into the system of production declined, especially relative to the forms of non-human labour that
the system was increasingly incorporating. In Marxian economic terms, the organic
composition of capital was radically transformed following the Second World War, as
capital costs were shifted from labour to machinery and, more importantly, toward
chemically and energy-intensive forms of non-human labour. Several consequences followed these transitions.
Ecological additions
ToP approaches address ecological disorganization associated with ecological additions. Ecological additions consist of pollutants that the ToP adds to the environment.
Following the Second World War, the nature of those pollutants began to change, while
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the number of ecological additions relative to production rose as treadmill practices
turned toward the use of chemical and energy-intensive production practices. As the ToP
increased the use of chemicals in production to intensify and replace human labour, it
began to produce large quantities of chemical pollution. The release of energy-related
pollution followed suit as the treadmill consumed larger and larger quantities of fossil
fuels. The extent of these processes over time cannot be measured completely, since
data on the volume of pollutants produced by the ToP were not kept, at least in the
United States, until 1988, and data reliability issues for the first few years of the data collection process resulted in underreporting. In 1991, however, under the Toxic Release
Inventory (TRI), the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reported that the
25,081 reporting facilities generated more than 29 billion pounds of waste, or about
1.16 million pounds of waste per facility. The quantity of TRI waste produced rose
to nearly 34 billion pounds annually by 2000 (1.4 million pounds per facility), then
it declined through 2010 during the long economic recession in the United States to
about 20.4 billion pounds (950,000 pounds per facility), and finally increased to 22.8
billion pounds of waste (1.09 million pounds per facility) by 2011. In the first decade of
the twenty-first century, TRI reporting facilities, which are only a small portion of the
facilities the EPA regulates, reported producing more than 239 billion pounds of toxic
waste. Research suggests that these TRI figures underestimate the total waste produced
because of underreporting (de Marchi and Hamilton 2006) and changes in TRI reporting requirements (Bennear 2008). The total waste produced may be up to 40 per cent
higher than reported.
Ecological withdrawals
Along with ecological additions, a second major issue that ToP theory addresses is
the effect of the ToP on ecological disorganization through ecological withdrawals.
Ecological withdrawals include the collection of raw material input into the treadmill
and the forms of ecological damage created in accessing those materials. These withdrawal effects include operations such as: the mining of minerals, coals, ferrous and
non-ferrous metals, chemicals and precious stones; the drilling for oil, natural gas and
other fossil fuel sources; and the harvesting of wood. These effects can also include the
consequences of withdrawal, such as the impact of changing the landscape through
mining on ecosystems, or the effects caused by withdrawing a significant volume of
water to facilitate withdrawal processes, or the pollution of land, air and water associated with withdrawal processes.
Ecological withdrawals have important impacts on ecological disorganization. As
an example of the widespread impacts that can be caused by one form of ecological
withdrawal, we provide some detail concerning the impacts of timber-harvesting and
deforestation on local and global ecosystems. These include: local climate change
(Nobre et al. 1991; Zhang et al. 1996); changes in local precipitation (Kanae et al. 2001;
Negri et al. 2004); changes to the global carbon cycle (Cramer et al. 2004); impacts on
other nearby types of forests lands (e.g. the effect of Tropical lowland deforestation
on Montane Cloud Forests, Lawton et al. 2001; Ray et al. 2006); impacts on tree species diversity (Hubbell et al. 2008) and genetic diversity of tree stock (Lowe et al. 2005;
Sebbenn et al. 2008); forest re-growth cycles (Zou et al. 1995); changes in microbial soil
diversity (Borneman and Triplett 1997); effects on soil erosion (Van Rompaey et al.
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2002) and soil nutrient run-off (Zheng et al. 2005); impacts on animal species diversity (Harvey et al. 2006), fish species diversity (Lorion and Kennedy 2009) and invertebrate diversity (Harding 2003); and numerous impacts on various natural water systems
(Sweeney et al. 2004; Coe et al. 2009). There are, of course, damaging impacts caused by
other ecological withdrawal processes such as: mountaintop removal mining; mining
of heavy metals; hydrofracking; mineral mining; oil drilling; coal tar, coal shale and
coal sand extraction; mining of nuclear materials; etc. Clearly, withdrawals that result
from the ToP cause extensive harm.
The process of ecological withdrawal not only harms the environment directly
through extraction methods, but withdrawal processes can also contribute to the production of ecological additions when certain extraction methods are employed. For
example, coal processing generates significant quantities of coal sludge during the
cleaning process and the preparation of extracted coal for the market. This process
uses large quantities of water, which can draw down local water tables. The coal slurry
that results from preparing coal for market contains a number of hazardous chemicals
(more than 60 are used). Coal sludge can also contain heavy metals that co-exist in
coal formations, including mercury, arsenic, beryllium, cadmium, nickel and selenium.
These wastes are often kept in coal impoundments, which themselves are often built
from the coal waste (for additional information, see the Coal Impoundment Location
& Information System (CIL&IS), www.coalimpoundment.org). The CIL&IS system lists
307 coal impoundments in the main coal-producing states of West Virginia, Kentucky,
Ohio, Pennsylvania and Tennessee. Human health often suffers from the impact of
ecological withdrawals associated with coal mining. Health-related quality-of-life indicators are significantly worse for US counties that contain coal-mining operations compared to those that do not contain coal-mining operations (Zullig and Hendryx 2010).
Synthesis
In the preceding sections, we addressed the contradictions between capitalism and
nature, pointing out that ecological Marxism and ToP approaches contain theoretical tools for laying out the character of that contradiction. To summarize that view,
the inherent expansionist logic of capitalism which requires constantly expanding
consumption of raw materials found in nature undermines nature’s ability to reproduce conditions for life. In addition, with the help of human labour, capital transforms
nature’s labour into objects that contain value in the human economy. Many of those
objects, and the capital exchanged for those objects, are luxury items—items that are
not necessary for human existence, but rather are items of pleasure. Those luxuries
come with a significant cost—ecological disorganization. Therefore, those individuals
or corporations who amass the greatest concentrations of wealth are also those likely to
have the greatest impacts on the disorganization of nature. In other words, those with
the most accumulated wealth have the ability to use their wealth to consume considerably more of nature’s wealth than others.
These observations raise two questions, one of which we shall not attempt to address
here. The unaddressed question has to do with how much can be consumed, and a
related question of what is fair to consume. Those questions are beyond the scope of
the present argument, but are valid questions for green criminologists to address and
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have important implications for criminological issues of justice. The question we will
address in the section that follows is whether the ecological destructive consequences of
capitalism are sufficient to say that capitalism is an organized form of economic activity
that produces crimes of ecological disorganization.3
Is Ecological Disorganization a Crime of Capitalism?
In the orthodox tradition, a crime is a violation of the law, a behaviour reprehensible
enough to call forward the condemnation of society in its written rules. The assumption
behind that approach to defining crime is that the law is a useful means for discerning the difference between behaviours that are and are not crime. It is our position,
however, that the law is not a useful mechanism for this purpose; the legal definition
of crime is not an objective, scientifically derived definition. Legally, crime is simply a
behaviour that the law labels as such. There is no standard in the law which describes
the behaviours that ought to be crimes—no objective, independent definition of crime
outside the labels the law creates and applies. As a social construction (Quinney 1970),
crime is flexible. This is particularly true where environmental matters are concerned,
as those behaviours which should be considered crimes against the environment have
been hotly debated (see, e.g. Beirne 1999, 2009).
In the case of behaviours that ought to be labelled green/environmental crime, we
favour scientific definitions of harm over the socially constructed definitions criminologists use when they rely on legal definitions of crime. Of particular concern is
that socially constructed legal definitions of environmental/green crimes vary widely
and appear in different forms of law and even international treaties (White 2011). This
makes green crime very difficult to define. Environmental law allows many harmful
behaviours to escape regulation because political and social interest groups strongly
influence environmental law decision-making practices.
We posit that a green crime is a behaviour that produces unnecessary ecological
harm—harms that can be avoided by organizing production in different ways than are
currently practised. Not only are these green crimes unnecessary; they promote the
disorganization of nature. Furthermore, the harm that is imposed on the environment
can be concretely defined by scientific standards. To illustrate the points we have made
about the definition of green crimes, we provide an example of the potential problem
of not using scientific standards of harm to define green crime.
Our example involves differential definitions of environmental harms related to lead
exposure/pollution. While there is extensive agreement in the scientific literature that
there is no safe level for exposure to lead (Pb), the law permits lead to be emitted
into the environment and in the workplace at certain levels (California Department of
Education 2013; EPA 2013a; Protection of Environment 40 C.F.R. § 80.2). The exposure levels the law contains are not scientifically agreed-upon standards, since scientists
3
A reviewer raised a concern about our use of the word ‘crime’ in the context of ecological disorganization. We use both
‘crime’ and ‘harms’ to refer to the effects of ecological disorganization. Hillyard and Tombs (2005, 2007) make the case that
researchers should keep the concepts of crime and harm separate. We include both terms together to indicate that ecological
disorganization creates harm and is sometimes defined as criminal. We also believe that referring to ecological and environmental ‘crime’ is important because it helps make the case that studies of this type should be within the purview of the discipline
of criminology. We expand on the discussion of ecological harm and crime in the discussion section.
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agree there is no safe level of exposure to lead (Gilbert and Weiss 2006). However, the
environmental rules regarding lead exposure that have been constructed reflect economic interests, privileging economic actors over public health and scientific standards
for exposure (Rosner and Markowitz 1985; Needleman 1997; Markowitz and Rosner
2003; Wedeen 2009).
Employing our definition of green crime detailed above, ecological disorganization
is a crime when the behaviour in question produces forms of ecological disorganization that nature cannot accommodate and which science can identify as a harm. In the
modern capitalist world economy, it may be economically beneficial to extract resources
from countries with low wage rates, ship them to other low-wage-rate nations to transform them into commodities and then ship them to other nations for consumption
(Gereffi 1999). While this behaviour is beneficial for capitalism in terms of expansion
and profit, it is not beneficial for the environment. The environmental impacts of the
international capitalist economy include escalated carbon dioxide pollution (Li and
Hewitt 2008; Stretesky and Lynch 2009) and other hazardous pollutants (Matthews
et al. 2001). As some researchers note (Matthews et al. 2001), corporations fail to consider how their behaviours impact ecological disorganization because they externalize
the costs of ecological harms—ecological problems that are produced by corporations
become social problems which the government, rather than the private firms that create
those problems, must address. This shifts the expense of anti-environmental practices
to the state, which must tax citizens to generate the funds for remedies. Corporations
benefit from the combination of weak environmental regulations and a pseudo-free
market which enables the corporations to externalize costs to the state. This in turn
facilitates private-sector accumulation by transferring corporate costs to individual tax
payers (see, e.g. O’Connor 1973).
In short, pollution is a cost of production in the contemporary system of capitalism. The forms of pollution which currently exist have been shaped by capitalism and
the ToP. The capitalist ToP maintains low commodity prices by taking advantage of
differentials in the costs of labour in the international labour market and by using
chemically and energy-intensive production practices that generate significant ecological disorganization through ecological withdrawals and additions (Schnaiberg 1980).
Together, these treadmill practices help push the expansion of production and consumption forward, continually escalating global ecological disorganization. In contemporary capitalism, corporations are able to externalize productive costs associated with
ecological disorganization because they are not required to address those costs in any
substantial way during the production and distribution of commodities. In the modern
world, the cost of responding to ecological disorganization is borne by governments.
Governments have a series of decisions to make about how to best protect capitalism,
nature and the citizens they represent. Should a government charge the polluters fees
for polluting? What are the economic consequences of doing so when other governments do not make that same choice? If decisions about the control of ecological disorganization are not reached by governments in a unified way through, for example,
treaties, then global corporations can simply avoid social control by moving their productive forces to a new location.
The recognition that global capitalism cannot be effectively controlled by statespecific regulations makes it clear that it is difficult to deter corporations from producing ecological disorganization through traditional market mechanisms (Stretesky
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et al. 2013a). Smaller firms often lack sufficient capital to escape regulation through
transferring production, giving large corporations an advantage that over time leads
to the concentration of capital in large global corporations. As a result, the large corporations acquire an increased capacity to avoid regulations in the fragmented regulatory environment of the contemporary world where ecological regulations vary from
nation to nation. For state social control of ecological disorganization produced by
global corporations to be effective, it is not so much the size of fines that matter as
much as their uniformity across nations.4 Until national governments recognize that
they must become global in the same way as capitalism, they will be ineffective when
they attempt to control the modern, global capitalist ToP and the resulting ecological
disorganization (Gould et al. 2008). Global corporations will select production policies
that provide the greatest return to shareholders without regard for the environmental
consequences5 or the impacts its behaviour has on public health, unless external influences require the global corporation to do so.
Consider, for example, maritime shipping. Maritime shipping offers the ability to
move large quantities of product over long distances where less expensive modes of
transport (e.g. rail) are unavailable. While cost-conscious for international trade, maritime shipping has significant ecological consequences. It is estimated that maritime
shipping emits more than one billion tons of atmospheric carbon dioxide annually
(Linstad et al. 2011). Studies indicate that carbon dioxide reductions of between 19 and
28 per cent can be achieved by regulating the maximum speed at which shipping vessels are allowed to travel (Linstad et al. 2011). This form of social control has no costs
to corporations other than extending the amount of time a shipment takes, while providing significant positive ecological benefits. To create such regulations effectively, all
nations would need to impose maximum speed regulations in waterways they control—
an outcome that would be possible through international maritime regulation. Will
corporations see the wisdom in these efforts to protect the environment? Or will they
lobby governments to prevent this kind of regulation? In general, corporations are not
concerned with the external, ecological costs and benefits of their actions or the longterm consequences of their behaviour—only with how their present activities impact
profit in the short run. With respect to merchant shipping, for example, studies indicate that climate change is likely to lower water levels in the Great Lakes, meaning that
vessels that operate in the Great Lakes will be required to reduce their loads, resulting
in the need for more shipments (Millerd 2011) at increased environmental costs such
as expansion of greenhouse gas emissions. In this case, climate change is expected
to affect future profits, leading to a reduction of 5–22 per cent in profits, depending
on the extent of climate change (Millerd 2011). Those future costs, however, are not
a concern to corporations which base their economic analysis on short-term data and
returns and, in doing so, are not considering the external costs associated with climate
change. Capitalism is not concerned with what the world will look like in 25, 100 or
1,000 years as it continues to churn the ToP, consuming nature and reconfiguring it
into commodities for the sole purpose of capital accumulation.
4
5
The same could be said about political divisions within nations.
Exceptions to this rule exist.
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Discussion and Conclusion
Capitalism constantly destroys and disorganizes nature as it seeks to expand at any cost.
As Ernest Mandel (1990: 23) wrote, ‘The capitalist’s compulsion is to accumulate’. As
for accumulated capital, it is employed continuously in search of more profit, to expand
itself indefinitely, which is impossible according to the rules of physics because you cannot create something (e.g. accumulated capital) out of nothing. Accumulated capital is
the end result of capitalism’s transformation of nature’s wealth.
We can, of course, turn to Marx for a more in-depth analysis. As Marx wrote in
Capital:
Accumulate! Accumulate! That is the Moses and the prophets! ... Accumulate for accumulation’s
sake, production for production’s sake: by this formula classical economy expressed the historical
mission of the bourgeoisie, and did not for a single moment deceive itself over the birth–throes of
wealth. (Marx 1974: 595)
This is the not-so-subtle secret of capitalism—to grow continuously, to accumulate and
to ignore anything outside of accumulation and expansion.
Others have written eloquently about the problem of ecological destruction more
generally, though not necessarily from economic or Marxian perspectives. In her seminal work, Silent Spring, noted biologist, Rachel Carson (1962) wrote:
Only within the moment of time represented by the present century has one species—man—acquired
significant power to alter the nature of the world. During the past quarter century this power has not
only increased to one of disturbing magnitude but it has changed in character. The most alarming
of all man’s assaults upon the environment is the contamination of air, earth’s rivers and seas with
dangerous and even lethal materials. This pollution is for the most part irrecoverable; the chain of
evil it initiates not only in the world that must support life but in living tissues is for the most part
irreversible. In this now universal contamination of the environment, chemicals are the sinister and
little-recognized partners of radiation in changing the very nature of the world. ... It took hundreds
of millions of years to produce the life that now inhabits the earth—eons of time .... Given time—
time not in years but millennia—life adjusts ... but in the modern world there is no time. (Carson
1962: 5–6)
Silent Spring should have marked a historical transformation in societies around the
world—especially industrial societies, since these nations bear the largest responsibility for industrial crimes against nature. Yet, that moment in time passed without much
change (Kovel 2007). For, if it had, the second coming of Silent Spring, which we argue
was ushered in by Colborn et al’s (1996) book, Our Stolen Future, and its message about
the effects of hormone-disrupting chemicals on the environment and the species of the
world would not have been necessary.
In another ground-breaking work, biologist Sandra Steingraber (1997) examined
the relationship between industrial chemical pollution and cancer. While she laid out
the scientific evidence for the connection, she also pointed out that governments contributed to the current chemical blizzard by establishing ineffective regulations. For
example, despite the fact that numerous studies indicate the ‘exquisite vulnerability of
the fetus to cancer-causing chemicals’, regulatory standards for exposure in the United
States and Britain are based on adults, ignoring the foetus or the health of pregnant
women (Steingraber 1997: 278). Steingraber argued that, at this point in history, it was
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IS IT A CRIME TO PRODUCE ECOLOGICAL DISORGANIZATION?
time to take a human rights approach to cancer. While an important observation, in
our view this is not just a human rights concern, but a concern for all species, and a concern best framed in relation to the rights of nature as a living being. It is not just chemical pollution from which we must protect the Earth and its species, but from capitalism
and the ways in which it employs chemicals in the ToP to intensify the destruction of
nature through ecological withdrawals and additions.
Capitalism’s unending desire to accumulate and its ecologically destructive forces are
serious crimes. Capitalism is based on the exploitation of nature and human labour,
and the unequal distribution of the results of exploitation. It does not seek justice;
rather it is simply in search of more. Many books have been written on the destructive
consequences of capitalism (e.g. Foster et al. 2010; Magdoff and Foster 2011). Some of
these stories are haunting, such as Erik Reece’s (2006) ethnography of Lost Mountain
and its surrounding communities and ecosystems. This is the story of a mountain being
destroyed by mountaintop removal mining. It is also the story of how capitalism, in its
search for efficiency, uses the ToP to create crimes of ecological disorganization.
Those who have chronicled the destruction of the Earth—including eminent scientists who study extraordinary problems like climate change—tend not to place blame
on capitalism. However, we argue that the ecological problems of the modern era cannot be understood without the backdrop of capitalism, the world’s driving economic
form, which has transformed itself since its emergence in the short world time of five
centuries. Primates first appeared on Earth about 80 million years ago. The ‘great apes’,
including humans, made their first appearance 15 million years ago. It is only in the last
few hundred years, a period that exists wholly within the domination of the capitalist
world system, that ecological destruction has become so intensified that it threatens the
existence of the world. The history of the crime of ecological disorganization cannot be
disentangled from the history of capitalism.
This claim is evident, as we argued above, in the work of ecological Marxists and ToP
theorists and researchers. Criminologists, and in particular green criminologists, seem
to shy away from connecting capitalism to ecological crime. If green criminology is to
mature, to move beyond case study analysis and undercover the causes of ecological
destruction, it must do so with the aid of political economic analysis.
Green criminology is revolutionary to the extent that it has opened up space for
the discussion of green harms and crimes—a space that, before the twenty-first century, was small within the criminological literature. The initial era of that revolution
in criminological thinking has occurred. In the past decade, green criminology has
successfully made some inroads into the criminological discipline, and one can find
some articles scattered in journals on green crime and a book series on green criminology now exists. Moreover, the green criminologists of the world have organized the
International Green Criminology Working Group to help solidify their place in the
discipline. These are important steps forward. This does not mean, however, that green
criminology is widely recognized in the discipline. One does not find, for example,
articles on green criminology published in the high-ranking journals in the discipline,
government agencies rarely provide funds for the study of green crimes and green
crime is not regularly addressed in criminology textbooks.
Despite significant news about the expanded state of environmental harm in the
world and the expanding scientific literature on that point, criminologists have been
slow to take up these kinds of concerns (Agnew 2012). For example, among traditional
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criminologists, almost no attention has been directed to issues such as climate change
(Agnew 2012), while, in contrast, green criminologists have made significant reference
to this issue (Stretesky and Lynch 2009; Lynch et al. 2010; Lynch and Stretesky 2010; and
chapters in White 2012).
We would also like to clarify our position on the definition of crime, science, ecological crime and discussions concerning the forms of ecological harm that ought to be
considered crimes. First, with respect to the definition of crime, criminology has been
marked by two primary opposing positions. The first defines crime as a violation of law,
and treats the violation of law as if it were an objective standard for defining crime.
The second view is that crime is a social construction and hence that it is a highly subjective matter. Neither view, in our opinion, is totally correct. To be sure, when these
views are combined, they tell us something about how crime is created and, in particular, the relationship between crime and law—that crime is subjectively constructed in
law through bureaucratic regimes that make the construction of law appear objective.
There is, however, nothing objective about creating crime in this way, and to view crime
as wholly subjective makes little sense either if there is ever a hope that law escapes its
tendency to reinforce capitalist relations of production.
In the ecological disorganization view we take, neither the criminal law nor the constructionist view of law is adequate. That is because, when the ecological system is disorganized by human activity, the harm that emerges is measureable. For example, when
humans pollute the environment, the level of pollution can be measured and its harm
can be detailed in studies showing the impact of exposure to those toxins by various
species and the ecosystem itself. Scientists can measure these outcomes, and do, using
comparisons of pollution to background chemicals in the environment, and other scientific measures such as the anthropogenic enrichment factor (AEF). Scientists can
measure changes in disease rates as pollution is added to the environment; they have
the ability to measure changes in air quality in different ways and for different purposes, can measure climate change, and many other conditions harmful to the ecosystem and the species that inhabit ecosystems. In this sense, the crime of ecological
disorganization is objective, much more so than criminal law or social constructionist
perspectives.
Second, for the criminologist, this raises a question posed perhaps more from resistance to efforts to change the discipline of criminology than anything else. That question states: is it possible to measure all forms of ecological harms objectively? At the
present juncture in history, criminologists do not know the answer to that question,
and have not tried to address this issue. Ecological scientists, however, have brought science to bear on many of these concerns. To be sure, they are unlikely to have addressed
all the ways in which ecological harms can be measured objectively, but that does not
mean that they have not built up an impressive catalogue of evidence as to how this can
be done.
Third, in reaction to this suggestion, the criminologist may reply: is it really an ecological harm/crime to kill a something as small and seemingly insignificant as a mosquito? The trouble with this question is that it frames the problem at the wrong level of
analysis and hence misses the point of examining how humans produce ecological disorganization. Humans do not kill one mosquito at a time—they kill them by the hundreds, thousands and millions by liberally applying pesticides to the environment. That
liberal application of pesticides kills other species and changes how nature works, often
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IS IT A CRIME TO PRODUCE ECOLOGICAL DISORGANIZATION?
leaving long-lasting toxins in the environment. In the contemporary period, structural
ecological harms are continually aggregated which causes severe ecological disorganization and has a great impact on the organization and health of nature. These harms
should no more be posed as micro-level questions (killing a mosquito) than should
the social problem of street crime. Both, in our view, have to do with the nature of the
modern system of world capitalism.
In closing, as Joel Kovel (2007: 3) notes, in the era of environmental awareness that
began in 1970, the ecological state of the world has gotten worse. As he states, the era
of environmental awareness has ‘been the era of greatest environmental breakdown’.
Kovel argues that we face a choice: the end of capitalism, or the end of the world.
According to Kovel, we are now ‘capitalism’s puppet’, acting according to its laws, letting it rule us instead of things being the other way around. He concludes that capitalism violates ‘the nature of nature’ and human nature, and needs to be replaced by a
way of life that promotes the health of the planet, humans and other species.
Until green criminology can become radical enough to take such a stance, it has
done little more than open an academic space where a small portion of criminologists
can call attention to the ecological ills and harms that routinely occur around us. The
solution to these problems is not to merely say ‘Ah, here is something criminologists
ought to study’, but to identify the forces that drive that process so they can be remediated. The problem is capitalism and crimes of ecological disorganization. The sooner
green criminologists recognize this, the better equipped they will be to understand the
real problem and what must be done.
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